About Me

I’m a 51-year-old Aspergic CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds' to remind it why it feeds.

Wednesday, 29 August 2018

Seem to have imported and re-packed the 1st
version Timpo swoppets, there is a
chance that they may have been importing someone else's figures, but they were
swoppets, they were British and the card art has one figure (behind the
anti-tank gun-barrel) clearly based on the 1st version paratrooper holding a
Sten-gun by the magazine.

Sets dated 1966 and large-enough for 6
figures at a squeeze, but probably a three or four figure assortment? It's
possible they also carried the US-only issues of Timpo 'Green Berets' with a beret matched to the body colour of the
1st version British Infantry (as the Australian slouch-hats were)?

Listing

Good Guys
(Timpo 1st version swoppets)

- Crusaders

- Knights

- Cowboys

- Indians

- 7th Cavalry

- Army (? Could be US, German, British, all
three, or the Green Berets)

- Accessories (? Could be larger-packs with
wagons or just trees, cacti etc...)

Company originally formed as Fairchild, some products appear in both Fairchild and Selcol
Fairchild graphics, as Selcol are
reported as being closed in 1968, it is fair to assume that the years 1968/9
through to 1978 are the 'Selcol Fairchild'
years, as Selcol get first billing,
it may well be that Selmer (parent of
Selcol) or Musical & Plastics Industries (MPI - parent of Selmer)
took over Fairchild and then
hived-off the result, or that Fairchild
took on the ailing (?) but better company, and agreed that due to asset help
from the acquisition, they should have predominance in the trademark?

One should also remember that Selcol would have had the greater 'goodwill' within the both the
toy and plastics industries, by dint of the decades of Selmer producing amplifiers and musical instruments alongside the Selcol records. Whatever the
reasons/relationship, Selmer ceased
to produce records when they moved Selcol
electronics out to the Braintree factory in 1968, the ill-feeling among the
Braintree plastics people seems to be of direct consequence to the arrival of Selcol Fairchild as a brand.

Although the relationship was a pre-existing one with
some records issued in Selcol Fairchild
graphics as early as 1962?

While a fair bit is known about Selcol, very little is known about Fairchild, the above being only confusion without the necessary
information! However, one piece of Fairchild's
history is freely available on the web: Their legal case as respondents to Marx Toys. To summarise the Judgement
linked to below - Marx accused Selcol of plagiarising a set of dogs
(almost certainly one of the sets of food/washing-powder premiums that cause
confusion, Marx had three ranges of
dogs), which Selcol basically -
happily - admitted to.

The case came down to when the dogs had been registered
as a design, and in the end the judge decided that by a matter of hours, the
plagiarism, err…wasn't and Marx lost
the attempt to have them removed.

It's not known what subsequently transpired between the
two companies in the wider case, but the failure of what was basically a 'cease
and desist' injunction is taught to law students to this day, as a piece of
seminal 'case law'/classic case of corporate timing, meaning it's readily
available on the web.